Here’s today’s COMMENT FROM AN OLD FART: The U.S. Constitution is a bit like the Bible. People want to select passage from both documents which suit their purpose and their intent. People don’t want to deal with the parts that they don’t agree with or that they find disagreeable.

Science Daily reported in More students report carrying guns in Chicago than New York or Los Angeles:

More students report carrying guns in Chicago than in New York or Los Angeles, a new Northwestern Medicine study shows. The findings provide historical background for Chicago’s 2016 spike in gun violence, which occurred mostly among youth and young adults.
While self-reported gun carrying increased in Chicago over the 2007 to 2013 time period, it declined rapidly in Los Angeles and remained less than half the Chicago rate in New York, according to the study from Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.
The prevalence of high school freshman and sophomore students who reported carrying a gun was 9 percent in Chicago, 4 percent in New York and 6 percent in Los Angeles between 2007 and 2013, the study found.
When students were exposed to more violence risk factors, such as feeling unsafe in school, being exposed to fights or doing illegal drugs, they were more likely to carry a gun, the study found. Chicago’s students were exposed to more guns and these risk factors between 2007 and 2013 than their peers in New York and LA.
The authors hypothesize Chicago students between the ages of 14 and 16 who were carrying guns in 2013 were likely involved in Chicago’s gun violence in 2016 and 2017….
The study is the first of its kind to compare major cities on self-reported gun carrying among younger high school students. It was published April 10 in the journal Injury Epidemiology.
“It’s not hard to imagine why more students in Chicago carry guns than the other two cities with significant violence and homicide burden,” said co-author Dr. Karen Sheehan, professor of pediatrics and preventive medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and a physician at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago. “Kids in Chicago are experiencing multiple layers of violence and fear of violence in school on a daily basis.”
The study authors created a violence index to better categorize the most high-risk students and describe the magnitude of their increased likelihood to carry a gun. This violence index accounted for mental health risk factors, such as feeling sad or hopeless, and behavioral health factors, such as bullying and physical fights at school. Students in Chicago had a significantly higher prevalence of almost all mental health and behavioral health risk factors compared to their peers in New York or LA….
Across all three cities, self-reported gun carrying was more frequent among boys (8.4 percent) than girls (2.5 percent). Six percent of African-Americans reported carrying a gun in the previous 30 days, which was higher than Hispanics (5.5 percent) and non-Hispanic whites (3.5 percent).
The study was based on self-reported data from the national Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBS), an anonymous, voluntary survey of public high-school students, for the three cities between 2007 and 2013. More than 50,000 respondents represented more than 1.13 million students. The study used four biennial waves of the YRBS. It focused on freshmen and sophomores because of the significant high school dropout rates among older students.
Publication of this article was funded by the Injury Free Coalition for Kids. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/04/180419130030.htm

More students report carrying guns in Chicago than New York or Los Angeles
Findings may help explain Chicago’s 2016 spike in gun violence
Date:
April 19, 2018
Source:
Northwestern University
Summary:
More students report carrying guns in Chicago than in New York or Los Angeles, a new study shows. The findings provide historical background for Chicago’s 2016 spike in gun violence, which occurred mostly among youth and young adults.

More students report carrying guns in Chicago than New York or Los Angeles
Findings may help explain Chicago’s 2016 spike in gun violence

April 19, 2018 | By Kristin Samuelson

CHICAGO – More students report carrying guns in Chicago than in New York or Los Angeles, a new Northwestern Medicine study shows. The findings provide historical background for Chicago’s 2016 spike in gun violence, which occurred mostly among youth and young adults.
While self-reported gun carrying increased in Chicago over the 2007 to 2013 time period, it declined rapidly in Los Angeles and remained less than half the Chicago rate in New York, according to the study from Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.
The prevalence of high school freshman and sophomore students who reported carrying a gun was 9 percent in Chicago, 4 percent in New York and 6 percent in Los Angeles between 2007 and 2013, the study found.
Professor of general internal medicine, geriatrics and preventive medicineWhen students were exposed to more violence risk factors, such as feeling unsafe in school, being exposed to fights or doing illegal drugs, they were more likely to carry a gun, the study found. Chicago’s students were exposed to more guns and these risk factors between 2007 and 2013 than their peers in New York and LA.
The authors hypothesize Chicago students between the ages of 14 and 16 who were carrying guns in 2013 were likely involved in Chicago’s gun violence in 2016 and 2017.
“Our findings suggest that there is a clear link between the increase in Chicago students carrying guns in 2013 and the city’s spike in gun violence in 2016,” said senior author Joseph Feinglass, professor of general internal medicine, geriatrics and preventive medicine at Feinberg. “The city was fertile ground for this increase in shootings.”
The study is the first of its kind to compare major cities on self-reported gun carrying among younger high school students. It was published April 10 in the journal Injury Epidemiology.
“It’s not hard to imagine why more students in Chicago carry guns than the other two cities with significant violence and homicide burden,” said co-author Dr. Karen Sheehan, professor of pediatrics and preventive medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and a physician at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago. “Kids in Chicago are experiencing multiple layers of violence and fear of violence in school on a daily basis.”
The study authors created a violence index to better categorize the most high-risk students and describe the magnitude of their increased likelihood to carry a gun. This violence index accounted for mental health risk factors, such as feeling sad or hopeless, and behavioral health factors, such as bullying and physical fights at school. Students in Chicago had a significantly higher prevalence of almost all mental health and behavioral health risk factors compared to their peers in New York or LA.
“Our findings highlight the ongoing need to address Chicago’s concentrated poverty and unemployment problems, its extreme levels of racial and ethnic segregation and the hopelessness and isolation so many young people feel,” Feinglass said.
Across all three cities, self-reported gun carrying was more frequent among boys (8.4 percent) than girls (2.5 percent). Six percent of African-Americans reported carrying a gun in the previous 30 days, which was higher than Hispanics (5.5 percent) and non-Hispanic whites (3.5 percent).
The study was based on self-reported data from the national Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBS), an anonymous, voluntary survey of public high-school students, for the three cities between 2007 and 2013. More than 50,000 respondents represented more than 1.13 million students. The study used four biennial waves of the YRBS. It focused on freshmen and sophomores because of the significant high school dropout rates among older students.
Topics: Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern Medicine https://news.northwestern.edu/stories/2018/april/gun-carrying-chicago/

The Brady Campaign reported key statistics:

Key Gun Violence Statistics*
Every Day on Average (ages 0-19)
Every day, 46 children and teens are shot in murders, assaults, suicides & suicide attempts, unintentional shootings, and police intervention.
Every day, 7 children and teens die from gun violence:
• 4 are murdered
• 3 die from suicide
Every day, 40 children and teens are shot and survive:
• 31 injured in an attack
• 1 survives a suicide attempt
• 8 shot unintentionally
Asking this simple question is an important step every parent can take to help keep their child safe, and possibly save their child’s life. Read more about Asking Saves Kids (ASK).
Note: Numbers may not sum because of rounding of CDC averages. http://www.bradycampaign.org/key-gun-violence-statistics

What both proponents of gun control and those who advocate unfettered gun possession along with unlimited possession of ALL types of guns don’t want to acknowledge is that it ultimately goes back to the Constitutional process of a legislature enacting a law and the judiciary reviewing the Constitutionality of the law. Neither side may be happy with the result. See, Both sides in the gun debate are acting like morons https://drwilda.com/tag/gun-control/

3D printing or additive manufacturing is a process of making three dimensional solid objects from a digital file.
The creation of a 3D printed object is achieved using additive processes. In an additive process an object is created by laying down successive layers of material until the object is created. Each of these layers can be seen as a thinly sliced horizontal cross-section of the eventual object.
3D printing is the opposite of subtractive manufacturing which is cutting out / hollowing out a piece of metal or plastic with for instance a milling machine.
3D printing enables you to produce complex (functional) shapes using less material than traditional manufacturing methods….
How Does 3D Printing Work?
It all starts with the creation of a 3D model in your computer. This digital design is for instance a CAD (Computer Aided Design) file. A 3D model is either created from the ground up with 3D modeling software or based on data generated with a 3D scanner. With a 3D scanner you’re able to create a digital copy of an object…. https://3dprinting.com/what-is-3d-printing/

That brings up a whole new debate. If you are able to manufacture banned, hard to get or untraceable guns, the entire existing gun debate becomes irrelevant. Who cares about background checks when you can make your AR at home?
Everyone should have seen this coming. Where there is a will, there is a way. The future of 3D printed guns is uncertain, but the conversation is only just beginning. I’m pretty sure that like all other digital information, once its out there, its out there and cannot be turned back. While politicians go around in circles with the current gun debate in the U.S., innovators like Cody Wilson will be there to show the folly in their ways…. http://anonhq.com/3d-printed-guns-make-gun-control-debate-obsolete/

3D printing is another area where technology will have profound impact on society.

Science Daily reported in 3-DIY: Printing your own bioprinter:

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have developed a low-cost 3-D bioprinter by com modifying a standard desktop 3-D printer, and they have released the breakthrough designs as open source so that anyone can build their own system. The researchers — Materials Science and Engineering (MSE) and Biomedical Engineering (BME) Associate Professor Adam Feinberg, BME postdoctoral fellow TJ Hinton, and Kira Pusch, a recent graduate of the MSE undergraduate program — recently published a paper in the journal HardwareX that contains complete instructions for printing and installing the syringe-based, large volume extruder (LVE) to modify any typical, commercial plastic printer.
“What we’ve created,” says Pusch, “is a large volume syringe pump extruder that works with almost any open source fused deposition modeling (FDM) printer. This means that it’s an inexpensive and relatively easy adaptation for people who use 3-D printers.”
As the researchers explain in their paper, “Large volume syringe pump extruder for desktop 3D printers,” most commercial 3-D bioprinters currently on the market range in cost from $10,000 to more than $200,000 and are typically proprietary machines, closed source, and difficult to modify.
“Essentially, we’ve developed a bioprinter that you can build for under $500, that I would argue is at least on par with many that cost far more money,” says Feinberg, who is also a member of the Bioengineered Organs Initiative at Carnegie Mellon. “Most 3-D bioprinters start between $10K and $20K. This is significantly cheaper, and we provide very detailed instructional videos. It’s really about democratizing technology and trying to get it into more people’s hands….” https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/03/180327132009.htm

Citation:

3-DIY: Printing your own bioprinter
Date: March 27, 2018
Source: College of Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University
Summary:
Researchers have developed a low-cost 3-D bioprinter by modifying a standard desktop 3-D printer, and they have released the breakthrough designs as open source so that anyone can build their own system.
Journal Reference:
1. Kira Pusch, Thomas J. Hinton, Adam W. Feinberg. Large volume syringe pump extruder for desktop 3D printers. HardwareX, 2018; 3: 49 DOI: 10.1016/j.ohx.2018.02.001

Here is the press release from Carnegie Mellon:

3-DIY: Printing your own bioprinter
by E. Forney and Emily Durham
Researchers in Adam Feinberg’s lab have developed a low-cost 3-D bioprinter by modifying a standard desktop 3-D printer, and they have released the breakthrough designs as open source so that anyone can build their own system.
Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have developed a low-cost 3-D bioprinter by modifying a standard desktop 3-D printer, and they have released the breakthrough designs as open source so that anyone can build their own system. The researchers—Materials Science and Engineering (MSE) and Biomedical Engineering (BME) Associate Professor Adam Feinberg, BME postdoctoral fellow TJ Hinton, and Kira Pusch, a recent graduate of the MSE undergraduate program—recently published a paper in the journal HardwareX that contains complete instructions for printing and installing the syringe-based, large volume extruder (LVE) to modify any typical, commercial plastic printer.
“What we’ve created,” says Pusch, “is a large volume syringe pump extruder that works with almost any open source fused deposition modeling (FDM) printer. This means that it’s an inexpensive and relatively easy adaptation for people who use 3-D printers.”
As the researchers explain in their paper, “Large volume syringe pump extruder for desktop 3D printers,” most commercial 3-D bioprinters currently on the market range in cost from $10,000 to more than $200,000 and are typically proprietary machines, closed source, and difficult to modify.
“Essentially, we’ve developed a bioprinter that you can build for under $500, that I would argue is at least on par with many that cost far more money,” says Feinberg, who is also a member of the Bioengineered Organs Initiative at Carnegie Mellon. “Most 3-D bioprinters start between $10K and $20K. This is significantly cheaper, and we provide very detailed instructional videos. It’s really about democratizing technology and trying to get it into more people’s hands.”
It’s about democratizing technology and trying to get it into more people’s hands.
Adam Feinberg, Associate Professor, Materials Science and Engineering & Biomedical Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University
And not only does the LVE cut down on cost, it also allows users to print artificial human tissue on a larger scale and at higher resolution, opening doors for researchers, makers, and professionals to experiment with 3-D printing biomaterials and fluids.
“Usually there’s a trade-off,” explains Feinberg, “because when the systems dispense smaller amounts of material, we have more control and can print small items with high resolution, but as systems get bigger, various challenges arise. The LVE 3-D bioprinter allows us to print much larger tissue scaffolds, at the scale of an entire human heart, with high quality.”
“Bioprinting has historically been limited in volume,” adds Pusch, “so essentially the goal is to just scale up the process without sacrificing detail and quality of the print.”
Pusch, the first author on the paper, was a research assistant in Feinberg’s lab for three years during her undergraduate career. During that time, she received an International Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (iSURF) to work in the Netherlands, and also interned with General Electric’s Center for Additive Technology Advancement. Following her graduation from Carnegie Mellon in December of 2017, she began a spring internship at Formlabs in Boston and has since accepted a second internship position for the summer at Blue Origin in Seattle. Pusch has also co-authored a second paper in ACS Biomaterials Science & Engineering with Hinton, “3D Printing PDMS Elastomer in a Hydrophilic Support Bath via Freeform Reversible Embedding.” As a research assistant in Feinberg’s lab, Pusch was able to experience real-world application of her research early on in her academic career. When asked about her experience in Feinberg’s lab, Pusch emphasizes how grateful she is to have had the opportunity to work with such supportive and brilliant mentors.
You might also like…
• Engineer hacks 3-D printer to rebuild hearts
• Bioengineered Organs Initiative
In their paper, the researchers demonstrated the system using alginate, a common biomaterial for 3-D printing, and using the lab’s signature Freeform Reversible Embedding of Suspended Hydrogels (FRESH) technique.
Feinberg’s lab aims to produce open source biomedical research that other researchers can expand upon. By making their research widely accessible, Feinberg’s lab hopes to seed innovation widely, to encourage the rapid development of biomedical technologies to save lives.
“We envision this as being the first of many technologies that we push into the open source environment to drive the field forward,” says Feinberg. “It’s something we really believe in.”
For media inquiries, contact Emily Durham at edurham1@andrew.cmu.edu. https://engineering.cmu.edu/news-events/news/2018/03/23-bioprinter-feinberg.html

Large-scale shootings have been a dominant driver of school safety debates, but a stabbing spree at a Pennsylvania high school this month should serve as a reminder that educators need to be prepared for a range of situations—including smaller, nonfatal incidents that don’t involve guns at all, school safety experts say.
Following most school shootings—like the December 2012 killings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.—conversation quickly turns to the polarizing subject of gun policy.
And while some districts work to implement comprehensive safety plans that address mental-health concerns, school climate, and security procedures, policymakers often direct efforts and resources specifically toward the prevention of gun-related incidents, experts say.
“When we focus our policy responses almost entirely on firearms in these events, we overlook major things and we aren’t going to address the root of the problem,” said Laura E. Agnich, an assistant professor of criminal justice and criminology at Georgia Southern University in Statesboro.
That narrow focus can lead to “knee jerk” responses such as overly broad zero-tolerance policies and costly building upgrades, instead of research-based school climate measures and carefully practiced safety procedures, Ms. Agnich said.
In the 2010-11 school year, U.S. public schools reported 5,000 cases of student possession of a firearm or explosive device, and 72,300 cases of possession of a knife or other sharp object, according to the most recent information available from the U.S. Department of Education…. http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2014/04/23/29knives_ep.h33.html

NI Direct of Northern Ireland has some great information for parents about knife crimes.

Know the law
Before talking to your child about knives, you need to know the facts:
• it is illegal for anyone to carry a knife if they intend to use it as a weapon – even in self defence
• police can search anyone they suspect of carrying a knife
• carrying a knife could mean being arrested, going to court and getting a criminal record, or even a prison sentence
• Knives, offensive weapons and the law (crime, justice and the law section)
Knives in school
It is a criminal offence to have a knife or other weapon on school premises. If a knife or other weapon is found on a pupil, the police will be called and it is likely the pupil will be arrested.
• School attendance and absence: the law
• If your child is arrested and charged
Talking to your child about knives
The best way to stop your child getting involved with knives is to talk to them about the dangers. This may not be easy as they may not want to talk about it, but keep trying as this is the first step to keeping your child safe.
You should remind them that by carrying a knife they are:
• giving themselves a false sense of security
• potentially arming an attacker, increasing the risk of getting stabbed or injured
• breaking the law
Keep a look out
Sometimes there might be obvious reasons for you to think your child is carrying a knife – such as a knife going missing from the kitchen.
However, there are other more subtle signs that you and the parents of your child’s friends can look out for such as:
• school’s not going well or they don’t want to go in to school at all
• they’ve been a recent victim of theft/bullying/mugging
• a different network of friends who may be older than your child…http://www.nidirect.gov.uk/keeping-your-child-safe-from-knife-crime

School violence is a complex set of issues and there is no one solution. The school violence issue mirrors the issue of violence in the larger society. Trying to decrease violence requires a long-term and sustained focus from parents, schools, law enforcement, and social service agencies.

Here’s today’s COMMENT FROM AN OLD FART: The U.S. Constitution is a bit like the Bible. People want to select passage from both documents which suit their purpose and their intent. People don’t want to deal with the parts that they don’t agree with or that they find disagreeable.

A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed

Slate published this interesting 2001article, What Does the Second Amendment Say About the Right To Own Guns?

State law and state constitutions may change, but the progress of Second Amendment jurisprudence is glacial. As a matter of pure legal precedent, the Justice Department likely has the winning argument in this debate simply because the last time the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on this point was in 1939. In United States v. Miller, the court held that the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms is not applicable in the absence of a reasonable relationship to the “well regulated militia” provision of the Second Amendment. The court stated that:

In the absence of any evidence tending to show that possession or use of a “shotgun having a barrel of less than eighteen inches in length” at this time has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument.

The Supreme Court has turned down every opportunity to accept a new case and clarify the question of whether Miller established a definitive test requiring some connection between guns and state militias or whether it was announcing a one-time-only rule about Jack Miller and his shotgun. Still, the lower courts have followed the first view, and, in the wake of Miller, virtually every lower court has accepted the state militia/collective rights test as a settled point of law. While a fascinating normative debate over whether or not the right should be an individual one rages in the academy, in think tanks, and around the candy machines at NRA headquarters, the Second Amendment issue is not a close call in the courthouse. Eminent legal scholars, including Sanford Levinson and historians such as Emory’s Michael Bellesiles, have done some staggering scholarly work on the subject of the original intent of the Framers and the prevalence of guns at the time of the founding of the country. [Updated May 8, 2002: Bellesiles’ methodology has recently come under fire by constitutional scholars.] None of it has induced the Supreme Court to step into the fray.

The modern Supreme Court has invalidated federal gun laws, most recently in United States v. Lopez, but not on Second Amendment grounds. Nothing about the decision in Lopez reinforces an individual’s right to bear arms; it merely curbs congressional attempts to regulate guns, which is by no means the same thing.

Although I would personally like to see as many civilian-owned guns eliminated from mainstream society as possible, I realize that this is not a politically realistic goal. Thus, I present my own plans for gun control that I would consider a valid compromise. Perhaps policy discussions can start from these.

1. A national system for registering guns and ammunition. Part of the reason New York City has stiff gun laws and high gun death rates is that anybody can go from New York to a state with less restrictive laws, get a friend who lives in the state to buy the guns for them, and take those guns back to NYC. (Yes, I am aware this is illegal, but it happens.) First, a national system would prevent this by scaring those “friends” into not buying the guns legally and selling them illegally, for if the guns are used in an illegal crime, that person can be held accountable. Second, a national system would be more helpful in tracking crimes after they have happened, to bring the perpetrators to justice.

2. Instant background checks on people attempting to buy guns or ammunition. Brady is still patchwork, and does indeed have its flaws in tracking felons. Felons and ex-cons should not have access to weapons, and many misdemeanors and juvenile crimes should also count against a person’s record.

3. Stiffer sentences for gun crimes. This has been the position of the NRA for quite some time, and it is certainly one with which I agree.

4. Gun education. Many guns are involved in accidents that could easily have been prevented by a little care or forethought. Perhaps gun purchasers should be required to take lessons in gun safety, at the purchaser’s expense. Again, the NRA has long been a proponent of gun education.

5. General education. Study after study has concluded that there is a direct correlation between lack of education and violent crime. Every dollar spent on education now will prevent countless dollars worth of crime damage in the future. Think of all the private and public funds used to pay for gun violence — hospital bills, funerals, insurance bills, the actual cost of buying firearms. Now invest that money in education, and watch the crime rate drop.

6. Hand grip ID tagging. This is technologically probably still in the future, but it would be a good goal to work for. The theory is, each gun is “registered” to one’s person palm prints (the legal purchaser of the gun), and only that person can fire that gun. If another person tries, the gun simply will not fire. Thus, stolen guns become useless, and cannot be used to harm anybody in the course of a crime. http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~zj5j-gttl/guns.htm

What both proponents of gun control and those who advocate unfettered gun possession along with unlimited possession of ALL types of guns don’t want to acknowledge is that it ultimately goes back to the Constitutional process of a legislature enacting a law and the judiciary reviewing the Constitutionality of the law. Neither side may be happy with the result.